If Summer Sinclair had watched the six o’clock news she would have seen that Karin Cavendish’s death was the dominant story. Instead she had run a hot bubble bath and switched off her mobile, lowering herself into the hot water, oblivious to everything happening outside her bathroom door. In fact, at that moment, oblivion seemed like a desirable option to Summer; a little voice in her head kept telling her to slip under the suds and not resurface. But, as she lay there letting the water cool around her body, she forced herself to consider her situation in a more optimistic light.
There has to be an upside to all this
, she thought, popping bubbles between her fingertips. It was such early days with her pregnancy she could possibly still take the role in
Krakatoa
. More importantly, the situation concerning Adam could be a lot worse. Although he seemed to be in a state of denial about Summer’s pregnancy, Adam had not mentioned the dreaded word ‘abortion’ – there was a little sparkle of hope there at least. A baby meant that Summer would always have him in her life, even if eventually their child became just a reminder of their time together. And there was still the chance that, as Summer’s pregnancy
progressed, Adam might have a change of heart and want to raise their child together. It was a slim hope, but a hope nevertheless.
She felt a sudden surge of anger that James Bailey,
her father
, had been denied that opportunity. While Summer wanted to get some distance between herself and Molly after their latest row, she was desperate to find out more about James – who he was, where he lived. The funny thing was that, throughout all those years that Summer had believed Jeff Bryant was her natural father, she had never had any real desire to meet him; stubbornly rejecting him for turning his back on Molly and herself. But James Bailey had had no idea that Summer even existed. He’d been duped, and they both deserved the chance to get to know one another. If he wanted to, of course. If he was even still alive.
She climbed out of the bath feeling more positive but slightly headachy, which she put down to the humidity in the bathroom. An hour later, however, the dull thud in her head had spread down her body, with sharp cramps in her stomach. She rubbed her palm lightly against her tummy, hoping that it would pass, but as the minutes ticked by and the pains began to get more frequent, she began to become frightened. Any pregnant woman in her first trimester was always haunted by the idea of miscarriage, and Summer was no exception. Heart in her throat, she crawled into bed and curled tight in the fetal position, finally managing to drift into a light sleep. But when she woke, just as the light was creeping through her curtains, she was sweating and nauseous and, with a rising sense of panic, she realized the pains had become stronger. She staggered to the kitchen to make herself breakfast, but she couldn’t face it; besides, the cramps were coming every few minutes now. Adam had insisted she see a top Harley Street obstetrician and an appointment had been pencilled in for the following
Monday, but Summer knew it wouldn’t wait that long. She looked upwards. Despite the row, she needed Molly’s help now more than ever. She climbed the stairs, her head swirling, and knocked on the door. Her heart sank as she realized there was no one home. The ache was really gaining pace now, like a boulder that was beginning to roll down a steep slope, picking up dust and sharp shards of rock as it went. There was also a nagging sensation around her shoulder, as if she had pulled a muscle. She knew her local GP often saw patients without an appointment if they turned up at the surgery, so Summer pulled on some jogging bottoms and a sweater to leave the house. She had only just set foot on the pavement when a pain seared through her abdomen, so sharp and severe it was as if she was being sawn in two. She wondered if she could make it back into the flat, but her legs felt too weak. She clutched onto the front garden wall and vomited onto the pavement. She tried to breathe but could feel no oxygen reaching her lungs; her head was so dizzy it was as if a ball bearing was whirling maniacally around her brain. The pain was almost unbearable now and her sight was blurring, until the houses and trees on the street were just a series of muted colours and shapes in front of her eyes. She tried to reach for her mobile phone but all strength had abandoned her body. The last thing she felt was a soft thud against the side of her head.
‘Can you tell us what happened?’ asked a soft female voice as Summer opened her eyes a fraction. She was disorientated and frightened, but she could tell she was in an ambulance. Two paramedics were staring at her, one male, one female, their faces fixed in concerned expressions. The sounds around her were distant and distorted, as if she was listening to them through water.
‘A neighbour found you on the street but couldn’t really tell us anything. Are you suffering from any known condition?’ asked the female paramedic as the siren screamed in the background. A tear trickled down her cheek. ‘I’m pregnant,’ whispered Summer as she began to lose consciousness once more. ‘I’m pregnant.’
Summer opened her eyes, squinting in the bright fluorescent light. She could see the dirty, peeling paint of a ceiling and faces staring down at her, at least five or six. Doctors in white coats, and nurses.
‘Where am I? What’s happening?’ she croaked.
A female doctor spoke. ‘I’m Doctor Shaw, Summer. Your pregnancy is ectopic, which means that the fetus is growing outside of your womb.’
‘My baby. Is it okay?’ whispered Summer.
‘Your Fallopian tube has ruptured. You’ve had morphine to ease the pain, but we’re going to have to take you into surgery immediately.’
Summer was conscious enough to know that this was not good news. And the pain was still there, consuming her whole body like fire. A nurse had picked up her hand and was checking her pulse. Summer did not miss the urgent, concerned glance she gave to the doctor.
‘The pulse is very low,’ said the nurse.
Doctor Shaw pointed towards the door, ordering everybody into action. ‘We need to get her to theatre now,’ she said urgently. ‘Has anyone been called, is anybody with you?’ asked the doctor as Summer could feel her bed being pushed along. She was scared, so scared, she could feel the life beginning to drain out of her body,
‘Am I going to die?’ whispered Summer, trying to lift her hand off the bed.
Dr Shaw put her hand over Summer’s. It felt warm and
strong. ‘Who should we call?’ she said kindly. Summer could read the older woman’s face. A flash of pity, concern and sadness that the doctor could not disguise.
‘My phone,’ whispered Summer, ‘my phone is in my bag. Molly Sinclair.’ Their disagreements were suddenly irrelevant. She wanted her mother to be there.
Her bed was being wheeled faster now, through some swinging doors, the bright lights of the hospital almost blinding her. Summer’s hands were trembling. If she was going to die, she didn’t want to die alone. It was becoming too difficult, too draining to speak. She lifted her hand off the bed to motion to the doctor, but drifted into unconsciousness once more.
Detective Chief Inspector Michael Wright sat in the semidarkness of his two-bedroom flat in Putney. It was a cramped space, sold to him as ‘a bijou apartment in the best part of London’. He snorted to himself as he took a cold beer from the fridge, thinking about Karin Cavendish’s palatial home. Not that all her money did her a great deal of good, he thought, lifting the beer to his lips. He rubbed his temples and groaned. What a day. He’d spent three hours interviewing Evan Harris, but had still not been able to charge him. His solicitor had been particularly sharp and aggressive; it appeared that the boy’s parents had money and had instructed some expensive hotshot to help their son. Michael knew he should be at the station, but he was so tired he couldn’t even think straight any more, and the cold beer sliding down his dry throat was the only pleasurable experience he’d had in days.
He sat in a frayed armchair, not bothering to turn on the light. The glow from the street cast a dim light that suited his mood. It was moments like this when Michael Wright found he could think most clearly, when his mind
was relaxed by alcohol and he sat alone with no distractions, slotting the pieces of his case together, like a jigsaw, until it all made sense and the picture became clear. As he turned the pieces over in his mind, Wright felt a sense of unease; something in the investigation didn’t seem right. All the signs pointed to Harris: the boy’s bedroom had been full of newspaper cuttings about Cavendish, he had a harassment order against him and, mostly importantly of all, when the prints of Karin’s windowsill had matched those in the file, Harris had finally admitted to being in Karin’s garden the night of her death. He was an obsessive, an eighteen-year-old loner who clearly had abandonment issues. Whilst he still lived with his parents, it was obvious Evan saw little of them; from what Michael could sense he was desperate to love and be loved by somebody. But that didn’t make him a murderer.
What troubled Wright the most was the lack of forensic evidence. Michael doubted Karin had struggled. He had worked on countless assault and murder cases where the victim had put up a fight. There was always something: tell-tale blood spots, fibres from the murderer’s clothes, skin or hair under the victim’s fingernails. But in Karin’s case, the initial pathologist’s report suggested that there was nothing. She hadn’t struggled. She had been caught unaware. And that meant she probably
knew
her attacker.
The previous day’s evening news had gone heavy on the death of Karin Cavendish; since then information from the public had begun to filter through. Two of Karin’s neighbours had both spotted a grey sports car parked outside her townhouse between around eight and half past. Michael wasn’t sure how significant the detail was. A sports car parked in a Kensington street was hardly unusual, but he filed it in his mental database anyway.
Michael stretched out his legs and held the beer bottle to
his forehead. What had Evan said about a phone call? The kid had claimed that, when he’d been standing by her window, Karin had received a phone call from someone called Maggie. Of course, he had asked the telephone company for a list of calls to and from Karin, but the process was slow. Suddenly, he jumped up and walked over to a sparse bookshelf. Michael wasn’t a big reader: he didn’t have time. There were a few golf magazines, a DIY manual, some picture books on World War Two and a handful of thrillers. He pulled out the book at the end of the shelf:
The Big Book of Baby Names
. He had always wondered why this book was on his shelf. When he had left the marital home three years ago, it must have been slipped into his hurriedly packed box of belongings. He smiled at the memory of him poring through the pages with his ex-wife Lynn, with her bloated pregnant belly and their giddy excitement about parenthood: he’d been unable to throw the book away; it was a connection to happier times. Before the drink problem kicked in, before work consumed his life. Before Lynn began to hate him for never being there.
He flipped through the yellowing pages before he came to the section on girls’ names – M. He put on his glasses and began to read the names, saying them out loud: ‘Maggie … Mandy … Molly.’
He grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled them all down.
At 8.30 a.m. DCI Michael Wright walked into the Midas Corporation building for his appointment with Adam Gold, suffering only slightly from a hangover. Many people would have thought it was strange that a grieving man should be in work, but years in the force had taught the detective that people responded to grief in different ways; for some the best method of coping was for business to carry on as normal. After being shown into Gold’s office, Wright settled into a chair opposite Adam’s desk and fixed him with a searching look.
God, he looks worse than me
, thought Michael. There were bags under Adam’s eyes and a permanent crease between his brows.
‘Can you tell me if the name Maggie means anything to you, Mr Gold?’ he began.
Adam simply shrugged and shook his head.
Michael pressed on. ‘What about Mandy, or Molly?’
‘Molly? Yes,’ said Adam, looking up alarmed. ‘Molly Sinclair is in our circle of friends.’
‘Molly Sinclair the model?’ asked Michael. ‘She was a friend of Ms Cavendish’s?’
Adam nodded. ‘Although I have to say that Molly and Karin have never particularly seen eye to eye.’
Wright made a note and looked up curiously. ‘What do you mean by that? Did they have a falling out?’
‘No, no specific reason that I am aware of.’ He paused. ‘I guess it was just social competitiveness.’
‘Competition enough to be a motive for murder?’ asked Wright quickly.
Adam scoffed. ‘Molly Sinclair is many things, but a murderer is not one of them.’
So what is she exactly?
thought Michael, thinking back twenty years to police college when a picture of Molly Sinclair had been sellotaped to the inside of his locker. Legs as long as Africa. That famous tumbling tawny mane of hair. She had more sex appeal than those skinny page three girls, was more natural and earthy than any
Playboy
centrefold. She must be roughly his age now. Mid-forties. Was she married? Wealthy? What if she wasn’t? Perhaps Gold was right, thought Michael, perhaps there was an element of jealousy. It couldn’t be easy to sit back and watch younger women like Karin Cavendish snagging the handsome, rich men she would once have attracted.
‘So, what about Harris?’ asked Adam. ‘I thought you had arrested him. Is there any reason why you’re extending the investigation?’
Michael Wright smiled to himself. How many times did coppers make that mistake? Spending all their time trying to nail the prime suspect when the real killer was roaming free, reading the papers and laughing at the police. Michael Wright wasn’t one of those men. Until he was absolutely sure that Harris was his man he was going to keep an open mind, and that if that meant digging deep, then so be it.
‘One last thing,’ said Michael, putting his notepad in his jacket pocket. ‘Do you know who Ginsui might be?’
‘I’m sorry I don’t. Why do you ask?’
‘No reason, Mr Gold,’ said Wright, standing. ‘Thank you for your time. I’ll be in touch again soon.’
Summer had been lucky, very lucky. After her Fallopian tube had ruptured, she had suffered massive internal bleeding, a plummeting pulse rate, and had needed an emergency blood transfusion. The surgeons had just got to her in time, however, and Summer woke to hear just how close she had come to death. She also heard that she had lost the baby; growing inside her left Fallopian tube, it had never had a chance, which sent her spiralling into a state of despair.
Molly meanwhile had telephoned Adam, who had insisted she be transferred to a private room in the hospital. Disappointed that he did not seem to have immediate plans to come and see Summer, Molly accepted his offer anyway, hoping the hospital bill would be enormous.
Molly sat at her daughter’s bedside, holding her hand, for three days. Summer was as pale as the inside of an eggshell. Her honey-coloured hair, spread out on the hospital pillow, seemed to have lost all its shine and lustre. Her eyes were shut, just two subtle dark crescents on her perfectly oval face. She looked tiny and broken, her thin frail body under the sheet. Molly’s eyes misted as she thought of her daughter alone and in pain. She had been in the flat when Summer had tried to wake her. After her argument with Summer, she’d gone to meet a friend for cocktails and, as she hadn’t been able to drive back to Marcus’s place, she had crashed at home, too far gone to hear Summer’s frantic knocking.
For the first time in a long time, Molly felt disgusted with herself; Summer’s condition – God she almost died – had been a slap in the face, a wake-up call that made Molly realize just what kind of mother she had been these past years. Sitting at her bedside, Molly had wondered how she
could make it up to her daughter, and only one idea had seemed appropriate.
She heard the sound of the door creak open and soft footsteps on the floor. Thinking it was another nurse doing their regular check on Summer, Molly glanced up. It wasn’t a nurse, it was a man in his late forties, tall and stockily dressed in a navy-blue suit and tie. He looked as if he had been handsome once, but his jaw now was jowly and his dark brown eyes were serious.
‘Molly Sinclair?’
‘Yes’, said Molly, surprised.
‘You’ve been a difficult woman to track down,’ he said gruffly.
‘And you are …?’ she asked, feeling a slight sense of unease. Molly put a protective hand on Summer’s arm.
He slipped his hand in his pocket and brought out a wallet. ‘Sorry, Chief Inspector Michael Wright,’ he said, flipping the wallet open to reveal his ID. ‘I’m looking after the Karin Cavendish investigation.’
His eyes wandered over to Summer and his shoulders seemed to stiffen. ‘Is she okay?’
‘She will be,’ said Molly, squeezing Summer’s fingers. ‘She will be.’
‘Miscarriage?’
‘Ectopic pregnancy,’ she said quietly.
A ghostly quiet settled on the room as Molly tried to work out what the inspector knew.
‘I know this is a bad time, but I need to talk to you about the death of Karin Cavendish,’ said Wright.
‘I know, I heard about that. It’s dreadful.’
‘So you won’t mind me asking a few questions? It won’t take long. If you’d just like to come through to somewhere a little more private.’
‘According to my mate Mark, the police aren’t entirely sure that they’ve got their man,’ said Chris, leafing through a pile of the day’s papers in Erin’s living room, looking for more news on the case.
‘So the police don’t think it’s that stalker?’ asked Erin, looking up from a news magazine.
Chris shrugged. ‘Mark says they’re not confident enough to charge him. Your mate Adam Gold has apparently been put under the microscope, too, but he has an alibi. However, Molly Sinclair has been taken in for questioning.’
‘Molly?’ said Erin. She had suspected months earlier that Molly was after Adam herself but, after the summer fête at The Standlings, Erin had become convinced that Summer was Adam’s bit on the side.
Which of them was it, and would either murder Karin? Surely not Summer?
Erin felt a stab of guilt. Even if it was for selfish reasons, she still wanted Karin’s murderer found, and she knew the fact that Adam had a mistress would undoubtedly be of interest to the police. But Erin was struggling with the idea of putting Summer into the frame. She was so sweet. A good person. They had had such fun in Monaco and at The Standlings.
There was no way that she would have murdered Karin … Was there?
‘Fancy a drink?’ asked Chris, peering down at Erin’s wine rack.
‘Umm, I think I’m becoming an alcoholic.’
‘Well, we’re under stress,’ smiled Chris, pulling out a bottle of red and opening it with a practised flourish. As Erin watched Chris pouring the wine, she had a sudden flash of
déjà vu
. Something that had been nagging at her suddenly became clear, and she cursed herself for not acknowledging it sooner.
‘Listen, something has been bothering me,’ said Erin, leaning forward, ‘and I’ve only just realized what it is.’
‘What?’ asked Chris.
‘Karin is a neat freak. A total perfectionist who doesn’t like a hair out of place.’
‘So?’
‘So, when I first went into the house that night, I remember seeing a bottle of wine on the kitchen side.’
Chris had a doubtful expression. ‘Erin, plenty of people have booze lying around the kitchen.’
‘Not Karin,’ said Erin. ‘She’s very particular like that – everything in its place. She drummed that into me when I was working for her. She’d certainly have put her wine away in the cellar. And there was nothing else on the kitchen surfaces that night, nothing at all. I remember thinking it was like a show home.’
‘Couldn’t she just have bought it that afternoon, or fetched it from the cellar? Who doesn’t like a glass of wine when they come home from work?’
Erin frowned. ‘The bottle in her kitchen was a bottle of red. Karin hates red wine. I heard her say once it gives her such a headache she thinks she’s allergic to it.’
Chris was looking at her with confusion. ‘So what does all this mean?’
‘I think Karin had a social call the night she died. Someone was at the house with her.’
Chris was starting to warm to the theory. ‘Well, it can’t have been a casual caller. Your mum or your best friend wouldn’t bring a bottle, would they?’
‘And think about it – who would bring a bottle of
red
wine round?’ said Erin. ‘Not a friend like Diana or Christina – they’d know she’d prefer a cup of green tea.’
They looked at each other, both feeling they were on to something.
‘A lover?’
‘Possible,’ said Erin, thinking out loud. ‘Anyway. Won’t the bottle have been checked for fingerprints?’
‘They could easily have been rubbed off by the murderer on his or her way out, if he or she had brought the wine round.’
Erin nodded thoughtfully.
‘Anyway. What was the wine?’ asked Chris.
Erin laughed. ‘I’ve only just remembered it was there, let alone what vineyard it came from. Anyway, what does it matter?’
‘Ooh, a great deal,’ replied Chris, walking back over to Erin’s wine rack. ‘You’re saying that whoever brought the bottle round is Karin’s killer. Well, the choice of wine a person brings round to somebody’s house says a great deal about them. For instance, if you go to a girlfriend’s for a gossip –’ Chris pulled out a bottle and held it up – ‘I bet you take a five-quid bottle of Pinot like this: cheap, cheerful. You don’t care about the wine. It’s just a prop.’
‘So you’re saying I’m cheap, Mr Scanlan!’ laughed Erin, throwing the cork at him.
He ducked and grinned, but continued with his line of thinking. ‘But say I was coming round to your house to seduce you …’
‘Promises, promises,’ laughed Erin before she could help herself.
‘Well, say I was rich and knew a lot about wine and wanted to impress you – which of course I would,’ he added with a grin, ‘I’d choose a very, very expensive bottle of vintage claret. A night-time wine. A romantic wine, a wine that said something about my status and taste, like a Petrus or a Château Margaux. A wine that deserved to be shared with somebody special.’ Chris was nodding thoughtfully. ‘You need to find out about the wine, Erin.’
‘Won’t the house be all cordoned off?’
‘Probably. But it was Karin’s home. I bet Adam could get in and I bet you could too. You just need an excuse.’